After rain played spoilsport in their first Asia Cup encounter, India and Pakistan will face each other in the Super 4 match on Sunday. The match will be played at the R. Premadasa International Cricket Stadium, Colombo and Pakistan have already announced their playing XI.
Babar Azam’s Pakistan defeated Bangladesh by 7 wickets in their first Super 4 match and will be looking to repeat that performance against India to secure a place in the final of the tournament. Pakistan’s pace attack has been in excellent form this Asia Cup, with the trio of Shaheen Shah Afridi, Haris Rauf and Naseem Shah taking 23 wickets in just three matches of the Asia Cup.
India will also be confident of their chances after inflicting a 10-wicket defeat upon Nepal in their last encounter. However, the Rohit Sharma-led side will try to approach the game a little differently from the last time, when India had trouble dealing with the Pakistani pacers and were struggling at 66 for the loss of four wickets at one stage before Ishan Kishan and Hardik stabilised the innings with a 100-run-plus partnership to take the team to a 250-run-plus target.
As in the previous match, rain could play a significant role in the clash between the arch-rivals, with weather.com predicting a 90% chance of rain in Colombo on Sunday. This time, however, the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) has decided to keep a reserve day on 11 September to allow fans to witness the star-studded encounter.
With showers playing a major role in the rest of the matches as well, the tournament organisers have announced that a reserve day would be kept for this fixture alone.
Despite a reserve day, the first priority of the match officials will be to get a result on Sunday itself. In case of time lost and delays, the overs will be trimmed and the match timings can be extended by 90 minutes. If the game cannot be completed, the action will move to Monday where play will resume from where it stopped today.
A confident Pakistani side have retained their playing XI from the last match against Bangladesh. Pakistan’s pace attack will include Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah, Haris Rauf and Faheem Ashraf while Shadab Khan will spearhead the spin department.
Pakistan’s Playing XI: Babar Azam (Captain), Shadab Khan (vice-captain), Imam-ul-Haq, Fakhar Zaman, Salman Agha, Iftikhar Ahmed, Mohammad Rizwan (wk), Faheem Ashraf, Naseem Shah, Shaheen Shah Afridi, Haris Rauf.le
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